Nothing happens, the time Cam comes to John, scraped up and shaking, scared. Nothing except that John tells him, secret he's never told anyone before. Even if Cam knew before – and John can't tell, running every conversation they've ever had over in his head, he can't tell – things are different now John's told him. Shifting.

Next move has to be Cam's, though, and Cam's frightened of being reported, frightened of being discharged. Frightened of someone seeing something else, ramping it up from shoving him around in the street a little. John resigns himself to waiting. To maybe not just waiting, but giving up waiting, accepting that they can both want, but that doesn't mean they get to have. Cam's always been the sensible one.

He still soaks up all the little stuff, though. The way Cam smiles, the way he looks at John sometimes. How it feels when Cam stands a little too close, lets John in a little too far. If it's all he's ever getting, John's going to make the most of it.

A month goes by, and nothing happens. No-one reports Cam, no-one hassles him. No-one even looks at him. John doesn't know who hurt him, but he likes to assume whoever it was is gone. He does not like to assume that Cam's just that good at hiding from him.

Another month, and it won't be long before they get reassigned, because they're pilots, highly trained, and they don't belong where they are. John's got friends all over the world, people whose lives he knows through email who he probably wouldn't recognize if they were stood right in front of him. He kind of hopes Cam will be another one of them; he wouldn't be the first one with whom John has an unspoken thing that they both pretend isn't there.

It's déjà vu all over again when Cam knocks at John's door one evening and pushes inside, except he's not bruised or scraped or trembling; he's in jeans and a sweater because it's getting cold, and he's smiling, and John's so caught up in that, he almost doesn't register that Cam's kissing him, sweet and bright and just, yeah, really good.

"You're good at keeping secrets, right?" Cam asks, kissing John again. John's ready for it this time, kisses back, trying to put as much sweetness into it as Cam does, because John's never felt like a sweet person, but Cam sure as hell is.

"Closed book," he promises, because even if he didn't have to be, for this, he wants to be.